It is common knowledge that people between 18 and 35 define a consumer class with considerable disposable income and a strong predilection to acquire goods and services. At the same time these people (per capita) rely less on newspapers for information than other forms of media.
Furthermore, the price of paper to print an edition of newspaper has also drastically increased over the years. Consequently, this increase in cost has been passed to the readers. The average price for a Sunday paper in a metropolitan area is $1.50. This cost has “turned away” readership in the Sunday paper because the readers perceive any news from the newspaper is readily available and more current by other media mediums such as: television, radio, and now the Internet. Thus, members of the public may forego a Sunday paper because they perceive that the information they would acquire from that particular Sunday edition does not match the cost of the newspaper. This is unfortunate because the shelf life of an advertisement is longer than the shelf life of the news surrounding the advertisement. Thus, members of the public perceive the major purpose of a newspaper is as a depository of all of the local advertisers' advertisements where the public can comparison shop on products they want to purchase.
This “turning away” of readership from newspapers as a source of information is unfortunate for both readers and local advertisers who utilize the Sunday paper to advertise their products for sale to the local public. The readers miss buying products that they could use offered at a discounted price. The advertisers' overhead in advertising becomes high because the ratio of cost of advertisement to number of persons seeing the advertisement is lower and that the vast majority of the potential buying public for that advertised product is not reached.
Another problem is the buying public's retention of the advertisements within the newspaper. More advertising appears on weekends, especially Sunday, than other days. For example a reader of a Sunday paper could see an advertisement for a product that appeals to him or her. The reader then plans on going to purchase the product, but at that time is unavailable to do so. As time passes the retention in the minds of the reader fades and the reader loses the interest to purchase the product from the advertiser. This results in a loss of sale for the advertiser and the possibility of the person paying more for a product from another vendor. The instant invention disclosed herein would curtail this problem because the advertisement would be readily available and instantly recognizable so as to refresh the memory of the reader.
The patent issued to Angles, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,933,811, is for the delivery of custom advertisements based on consumer profiles. This type of target advertisement is heavily dependent upon people willing to provide information on their buying habits. A majority of people are unwilling to provide such information to “on-line” market research because of issues of privacy. Therefore, this type of advertising has seen little usage by “e-commerce”. The instant invention does not need consumer profiles in order to provide information to a particular audience. The advertisements present on-line are identical, and thus readily identifiable to the particular public segment, to what the advertisers' advertisement looks like in the newspaper. Further the on-line advertisement extends the shelf-life of the advertisement because it is presented to the target audience for the entire week instead of one day as an example.
The patent issued to Brown, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,368, discloses a system to queue advertisements. The purpose of queuing is one of prioritization. Again profiles must be built in order to utilize the disclosed invention and the concerns of privacy permeate this disclosed invention as in the previously discussed Angles, et al. patent.
The patent issued to Gifford, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,424, disclosed digital advertisements for the use of purchasing products on-line. The disclosed invention has no counterpart paper advertisement and the disclosed invention does not disclose whether the digital advertisement is in a form that is readily ascertainable (visually recognizable) to the buying public. The instant invention provides for advertisements that are instantly recognizable to the buying public because the advertisements are identical to the advertisements within the newspaper.
The following prior art reflects the state of the art of which applicant is aware and is included herewith to discharge applicant's acknowledged duty to disclose relevant prior art. It is stipulated, however, that none of these references teach singly nor render obvious when considered in any conceivable combination the nexus of the instant invention as disclosed in greater detail hereinafter and as particularly claimed.
U.S. PAT. NO.ISSUE DATEINVENTOR5,146,552Sep. 8, 1992Cassorla, et al.5,276,793Jan. 4, 1994Borgendale, et al.5,724,424Mar. 3, 1998Gifford5,870,552Feb. 9, 1999Dozier, et al.5,933,811Aug. 3, 1999Angles, et al.6,026,368Feb. 15, 2000Brown, et al.
The prior art listed above but not specifically described further catalogs the prior art of which the applicant is aware. These references diverge even more starkly from the references specifically distinguished above.